Olly, Olly, Oxen Frey

by Paul Manchester

  Naturally this sudden change was a big surprise to every one of them. But, after the shock wore off, the beetle-folk were thrilled as they had been locked into servitude to the Blue Queen for generations. (beetle-folk don’t live very long). Being inherently industrious they were not terribly daunted by the prospect of creating their new civilization from scratch. It was a rather nice island.

  Eventually Pricker’s story got around – of the golden boy Jack – who had rescued them all from eternal servitude. The island was named in Jack’s honor – The Island of Jack. From then on, Jack was worshiped as a deity and every year at Jackmas, all the island’s inhabitants wore diapers in honor of their great golden god, Jack, and prayed for the day that he might return to them.

  Chapter 24

  The Storm

  Afternoon deepened into a rich cloud-filled sunset, painting the turbulent sea around the ship in sparkling yellows and oranges. Jenny and the Wishermans were still lashed along the front rails of the ship. There was a constant flurry of activity around and above them as the small sailors pulled on ropes and climbed the forward mast like kids on the jungle gym at school.

  The brownie pirates didn’t seem evil enough to be doing what they were doing. She’d always thought that awful things were only done by awful people. But maybe awful things were done by ordinary people too? The brownies acted friendly but didn’t seem to care about the Wishermans’ children. Jenny wondered if she’d ever see her own family again.

  Footbe and the pirates were taking Jenny to the Blue Queen’s castle where her blood was going to be fed to bad fuzzy-wiggles. This was not working out at all how she expected.

  She’d overheard that the pirate ship was en route north to the mouth of the Great River – which led inland to Nor’city, Frey’s capital. Papy said the city spread out like a “festerin’ rash” across the hillsides below the castle of the Blue Queen. He and Mamy were not too big on cities.

  The Cap’n said that it should be a seven or eight hour voyage to the mouth of the river, but strong winds argued otherwise.

  The ship had tarried a short while at the mouth of the Riddle River, waiting for the floating island of the Wish Market, but the island never appeared. The Wish Monger was usually on schedule, but occasionally took forays elsewhere if Mordette saw potential profit.

  Jenny had never heard of a floating island before, and despite all the scary things going on she was curious to see it.

  After a few hours, the ship set sail. Once underway, Captain Billy Blind pushed through the brownies in the forecastle like he expected applause. He was a handsome brownie with a strong jaw and ice blue eyes. He lifted his feathered hat in an extravagant bow to the Wishermans and sang out in his rich baritone voice:

  “The Wishin’ Market ‘tis n’t here

  we have n’ time ta wait ah fear!

  A sack o’ blood wi’ pretty eyes

  must be redeemed ta claim our prize!”

  His gaze lingered casually on Jenny – the sack of blood with pretty eyes.

  Jenny stared hard at him. “Why’re you called Captain Billy Blind if you ain’t blind?”

  The captain sighed dramatically and sang out:

  “I never talk with my livestock –

  it complicates me work post hoc.

  But, if they call me Billy Blind

  It’s cuz I’m blind ta fear ye’ll find!”

  Mamy snorted. “Ye’re not just blind ta fear, ye’re also blind ta right an’ wrong! And yer meter’s off too – figgers ya wouldna know the stress shoulda be on ‘lives’ not ‘stock’,” she added in a mutter.

  The captain shrugged with a smile,

  “Ye think too small, I be not bad,

  Tis just me biz’nuss, don’t be mad!

  I’ll bring the Queen her brand new pet –

  for profit’s dictums must be met!”

  The captain gave another dazzling smile and sauntered back towards the wheel shouting directions to the crew.

  “That talking in poetry thing gets really lame at times.” groused Jenny.

  Gibbie sighed quietly:

  “Ye’ve no idee the truth ye sow.

  We hate it more than ye can know.

  But, what be worse is ev’ry bleater’s –”

  Gibbie stopped with a mischievous grin.

  “gots ta finish t’other’s meter!”

  – completed an exasperated brownie next to him who stalked off in a huff.

  Gibbie laughed, and Jenny couldn’t help but laugh with him. But then again she remembered where she was headed.

  The Wish Market’s next scheduled stop should be at the mouth of the Great River on Nerpday – in another two days. That gave time to deliver Jenny up the river to the queen and return to meet the Water Witch.

  Gibbie saw her thoughts and quietly gave Jenny a sad shrug. She wondered if perhaps the brownies weren’t as fond of their captain as she’d first thought.

  Twilight brought hints of an oncoming storm. The waves grew higher and the valleys between the waves grew deeper. The brownies moved Mamy and Papy and their stuff below decks to keep them dry, but Jenny didn’t fit below deck and neither did the phooka at the back of the ship. Now that the sails were all tied up and out of the way of the storm, she could see Footbe easily. He often looked at Jenny with confusion, but she didn’t know what to make of it.

  Tied up to the front rail, Jenny felt more than a little seasick as the boat sailed up one crest and swept down into its trough. It was a veritable roller-coaster and Jenny was no great lover of roller-coasters. Maybe she was going to drown in a shipwreck and she’d been worried about the wrong thing!

  Jenny was soon soaked. Every so often she’d catch a glance of the miserable phooka hanging on tightly at the back of the ship, and think, Serves you right.

  Captain Billy Blind seemed to be everywhere at once as the seas became choppier. He shouted directions to the crew and pulled and heaved as hard as any of them. She ultimately did some heaving too – though of a slightly different kind.

  Then the rain hit. The rain was warm. Warmer than any rain back home in Washington. Jenny’s cloak and hat were down below with Mamy and Papy where it was dry-ish. Jenny was drenched. The rain and the wind lasted for hours. Some of the brownies on deck would have been washed overboard but for the ropes attaching their waists to the nearest rail.

  The storm lasted all night. Somehow Jenny fell asleep amid the deluge.

  * * * *

  Hours later, she started awake when the ship gave a crash, and she was jolted forward.

  The early morning sky was clear, yet everything was crooked. She was still tied to the rail, but her ties were loose enough for her to squirm high enough to peer over the rail into the water below. The ship had grounded on a reef. It was stuck fast. Across an expanse of lagoon she could see a tropical island with three mountains poking up from its center.

  Jenny glanced to the back of the ship and noticed that Footbe was gone. Was he washed overboard in the storm?

  Chapter 25

  Watery

  Revelations

  Finn looked at the small creature who was supposed to be his mother. Mom? Meryth? He wasn’t sure what he wanted to call her. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about all of this, but if Jack was still alive somewhere, this sea chimp might be Finn’s only hope to find him. And Jenny too, of course.

  “Your father’s boat used to be hidden down below –behind the waterfall.” She took a big breath. “I can’t believe it’s been fifteen years,” she murmured – this last bit half to herself.

  “Well, er... time flies... or swims... we gotta get going.” Finn added as she stared off into her thoughts.

  She looked up at him. “I wish I knew what happened to your father. I’m not sure if it’s too late for you to help us. Your father was supposed to be with yo
u. But, it has always depended on you getting back in time.”

  “I don’t understand. I’m only fifteen! What help could I have been when I was even younger?”

  “You’re going to save the merfolk. Or, at least we hoped you could.” His mother looked at him with expectant eyes.

  “I’m just a kid. I... I’ll do what I can? Do I get some sort of magic sword? Or special bag of magic?”

  “No, you have everything you need.”

  “Uh... okay. But I’ve also got to save Jack and Jenny.”

  “I understand. You should know that I don’t have much time. Across the lake there’s a tunnel that leads to the surface. In a matter of days I’ll devolve into some sort of pool of goo. I won’t be able to do much to help you then.”

  A pool of goo? Finn’s head was too full to speak. He nodded and quickly dove into his leather bag. He passed by his dead phone and pulled out his water bottle. Hoping the water was okay, he filled it from the edge of the waterfall near the entrance. He pulled a large garbage bag and tape out of his satchel and wrapped it all up. His satchel was waterproofed (he did live in Washington), but he wanted to keep his sketch pads and stuff dry if they were crossing a lake. He placed the key once again around his neck.

  “You don’t need that key anymore,” his mom noted.

  “I’m sort of used to it,” Finn said. He had worn it since he was a baby. The fantasy mother which his imagination had connected with the key, felt far more like the mother he wanted than the strange creature in front of him.

  He nodded towards the entrance, “Let’s go.”

  His mom followed him out of the chamber and they shimmied along the uneven trail behind the waterfall. Slippery fragments of shale made the descent to the water’s edge a tricky endeavor.

  Finn quickly saw that the sharp rocks were too difficult for his mother to crawl over, so he picked her up and carried her like a toddler (her skin felt weird... cold... a little bit like that of a big salamander... he tried not to think about it).

  Speech was difficult with the roaring falls next to them, but as they reached the base, she directed him with hand signals behind the torrent of falling water. Ahead was a dark water-filled cavern. Half buried in the rocky sand an upside-down rowboat lay near the water’s edge. It was chained to an iron stake impaled in the rock wall.

  The steel boat was old, but in good condition considering its age. The Naughty-lush was painted on its prow in flaking black paint. Finn laughed. “This was my dad’s?”

  “We brought it from your world. It was the boat he was fishing from when we met.” Her wistful look made Finn forget for a moment that she was a sea chimp. “Much too small for the middle of the Sound... but, perhaps if he’d had more sense we wouldn’t have met.”

  It took a bit of effort to dig the rowboat out of the sand and turn it over. He needed another set of arms. It would have been easier if Jack were there to help. They always did stuff together. He wouldn’t believe that Jack could be gone. None of this made sense. Finn still half hoped that this was all some hallucinogenic dream from Jack’s dad’s mushrooms. He wanted to wake up.

  “Finn?” whispered his mother’s voice. He realized that she’d been talking.

  He looked up to see what she had said.

  “You remind me of him. Your father. Always in his head. He wasn’t much older than you are now when I first met him.”

  Meryth’s scrutiny made Finn uncomfortable. He glided the boat half into the water and stood knee deep. “Are you swimming or riding in the boat?”

  “Who knows what’s living in that lake!” She shuddered.

  “That’s – reassuring.” Finn quickly stepped out of the water.

  His mother giggled. “You really are so like your father. He used to make me laugh.”

  Finn gave her a weak smile. There were long oars wedged lengthwise under the benches of the boat. He slid them out.

  He looked back.

  She was too small to climb over the edge.

  Finn patiently climbed out and braved the dangerous water and carried her to the boat. He tossed in his bag. He waded alongside – somewhat terrified that a tentacle was going to grab his ankle at any moment. Who knew what to expect in a place like this? Finn pushed The Naughty-lush away from the sand bar, climbed, in and positioned himself on the center bench facing his mother at the back. He fit the oars into their oarlocks.

  Now that the boat was bobbing on its own in the dark cavern, he carefully turned the craft around with one of the oars. Avoiding the worst of the wet spray, he glided the craft with steady pulls along a tumultuous waterway at the far side of the fall and they swept out onto the underground lake.

  It took a few minutes to get beyond the sound of the falls. His mother sat there with her sea chimp smile. Meryth looked proud of him as he pulled steady across the water.

  The lake was big and misty. Three football lengths across perhaps? It was hard to tell with the mist. The sheer sides of the cavern ascended to a ceiling lost in darkness. Occasionally swamp-like forests of glowing stalagmites punctuated the water around them and reached into the darkness above. Sometimes stalactites descended from above to almost touch the water. Finn maneuvered The Naughty-lush through these bayous of stone till he again reached open water.

  “You’ve decorated your dad’s bag. You have his artistic talent. The mermen you tooled into the leather are beautiful, even if they aren’t entirely accurate.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” huffed out Finn, pulling at the oars.

  “Well, it is a bit modest. Oh, you’ll see for yourself someday,” she smiled to herself in a funny way.

  “Okay...” he wasn’t sure how to understand her critique.

  “Would you like to hear about how your father and I met?”

  Finn looked up and shrugged with an adolescent assent.

  His mother smiled and looked out across the water. “It’s tough to be a teen whether you’re human or merfolk. I thought my parents didn’t understand me. Maybe they didn’t. I was sixteen when I met your dad. I wasn’t supposed to visit the human world. I was told how dangerous it is.”

  “Washington?” Finn huffed out. He was breathing hard at this point. Rowing took quite a bit more breath than he expected. “I guess it can be a little bit scary if you are in the middle of the Sound...”

  “It’s a horribly frightening place. And exciting. It was the nixies’ stories that convinced me to go. They planted the idea in my head. The nixies spy on humans and bring back stories. They’d also snatch objects so strange that no one quite knew what they were, or even what they were made of.”

  Finn stopped rowing for a moment to catch his breath. “What are nixies?”

  “Nixies are fairies. They’re small. They have wings.” She thought a moment. “They’re crazy. They’re like badly behaved pixies. Nixies steal stuff they think no one wants. My father hates them. Or... hated them...” She hesitated, then continued. “He forbade me to visit the nixies. He didn’t consider them a good influence for a princess.”

  “If they steal stuff, maybe he was right.” Finn started up rowing again. “Wait, Princess?”

  She laughed and ignored him. “Loot’s End wasn’t far from my father’s palace. I would sneak out at night and sit with the gators at the edge of the river and listen to the nixies’ stories.”

  “Gators? As in alligators?”

  “Hmm? Of course. Now, where was I?”

  “You said something about a palace?” Finn offered with more than a bit of curiosity.

  “Yes. You’re of the house of mer’Rin.” his mother said off-handedly. “Well, one night I ran away. I didn’t want my parents telling me what to do. I knew there was a portal in the ocean to the south of us, and it brought me to the Sound near Whittle-Dedee Island.”

  “Whidbey Island?”

  “It wasn’t nearly as mu
ch fun as I expected. The water is cold and your fish don’t talk! I’ve never been so lonely before in my life! But, I’d also never seen a human before. It’s so peculiar to see two legs coming out from where there should be a tail. I swam up to some swimmers near a big city and was never so startled in my life to see that they had legs! I guess I startled them too when they saw I had a tail. When I tried to talk it was terrible! They either screamed and chased me, or screamed and tried to get away from me. Lots of screaming. It was awful. I explored the whole coast. I saw Seattle and all its giant towers. The giant ships. But, it was terribly lonely. When a storm hit, I was so depressed I decided to go home and face my parents.”

  Finn could see that she was lost in memories. He had found a steady rhythm with the oars and The Naughty-lush skimmed across the smooth water.

  She continued. “The portal is in the deep water west of - uh, Whid-beby Island. And that’s where I saw your father’s boat. It had over-turned and he was holding on as best he could. He’d been out fishing, had fallen asleep, it had drifted. The choppy water flipped the boat. He was the prettiest man I’d ever seen – with or without a tail. So, I rescued your father... and his boat, and brought them to the beach.

  “James was the first human who didn’t completely fall apart when he saw me. He was also sixteen and such a marvelous painter. He had wavy blonde hair that got curly when it was wet. His parents were not very forgiving and your father was head-strong and wild. Your father had been kicked out of his parents’ house and lived in a tiny cabin near the water. His grandparents owned the property. He was rebellious like me. I was fascinated with feet,” she laughed. “They are so strange looking. My father would’ve been shocked to know that I slept in a human’s bathtub for an entire month. But, we had such a great time. He’d paint and I’d sing. James taught me a lot about your world.”